Here's the Next Wealth Management Disruption

March 14, 2019

Wealth management as an industry has changed drastically over the past three decades, from the birth of online trading to the proliferation of robo-advisors, Franklin Tsung writes in Forbes. But the next wave of innovation will be what Tsung calls “wealth creation services.”

So far, none of the innovations in the wealth management space have changed the status quo: humans and robo-advisors essentially offer the same solution at the mass affluent level, while more complex financial planning tasks required by the more wealthy, such as establishing trust accounts, can’t be automated, according to Tsung, founder and CEO of BlackCrown Inc., a wealth management technology provider.

Therefore, many of the changes in the industry have essentially “been natural evolution and extensions of existing norms,” he writes.

True disruption, on the other hand, should lead to something new, Tsung writes, quoting Harvard Business School Professor Clayton Christensen: “Disruptive technologies typically enable new markets to emerge.” And that “next wave” is wealth creation services, according to Tsung.

“By focusing on innovating the wealth creation side of wealth management, businesses will be able to introduce investment opportunities that generate the necessary portfolio returns to truly ‘retire,’” he writes.